The Future of Solo Builds and Guild Wars

Sadly if you went of multiple accounts including 2 accounts or even 3, you would ban a fair few GW players. I'm sure alot of players have 2 accounts, in my experience I have found a few who have.

Well. I personally think that there is NO way to nerf ele tanks unless u take away stoneflesh. However. The really simple way to nerf 55s is to make protective spirit to targer OTHER ALLY. But the thing is that 55s are incredible versatile and fairly fast killers where earth tanks are fairly slow and are slaughered anywhere with interrupts at all or any enchant removal, and trappers are just plain slow. In fact I even know of a build that is even more (actually MUCH more) versatile then the 55 or any other build for that matter. But its REALLY REALLY slow. I believe that is fair. But 55 isnt. srry to say.

Oh joy, another "I can't solo farm so no one else should be allowed to either" thread. Do us a favor, don't bother.

About 16 months too late to nerf the 55 build buddy.

Sorry, I didn't type that as I intended to.

I meant, of course, they should blacklist IPs which have running bots. Not just any IP with multiple accounts.

This may be anathema, but...

As much as I have gained from this fan site and similar.. and wiki...

Anyone with half a shot at bragging rights posts the latest and greatest, and boom, say, 25% of the playing GW population knows about it within 20 minutes. In retrospect, this has probably 'ruined' a good portion of the game play for me. Mitigated a lot of the coolness factor.

Case in point: When Prophecies came out, the fan sites were not nearly as well developed, and looking back, that was the best playing campaign imho. NF comes out and wiki has all the elite skills and locations posted within a week or something?!? I only have myself to blame, but of course I go and look everything up. Slightest bit of difficulty on a mission, and I go and look up how the mission plays out. (Maybe getting bombarded with STUPID NOOBZ during the mission was something of a motivator...)

It is kind of interesting actually. The game is competitive in a sense - having more than, or being better than, or knowing more about the game than the other guy; this is what probably drives a lot of us. Bragging rights. That extends into most of the fan sites. Knowledge of the game of the game is crucial for that competitive edge. Seems like a death spiral. In the game we say 'Look at me' - on the fan sites we say 'Look at what I can do' and post so everyone is sure to acknowledge us. Builds spread, 'weaknesses' get exploited, macros get set, Anet nerfs, game play spirals.

I am as guilty as anyone I suppose.

There is nothing wrong with the various 55 builds. They are just some builds amongst many others.

As for soloing: I sincerely hope solo play and not party play will be the default in GW2. Not by 55 monks, but by just having leveled enough to be able to solo. For every profession! Its time to get some things straight here: Players don't want to wait for partymembers and players don't like to share droppings. That will never change!

More than one account = Bot farmer?

I have 3 accounts that I use. The only 'farming' I do, is to aquire materials and gold for armor and weapons for up to 23 characters (don't ask, but if you must know, 3 people share these accounts under 1 roof. Now to aquire 2 more computers.).

farming cant be nerfed lol

Why dont they just make PvE Harder. Add in more mesmers and necros with enchant removal, interrupts and lifestealing skills. Boom 90% of cookie cutter farming builds are ruined with decent enchant stripping and interrupts. Sure eventually people will find a way around that, but then you just add in some more counters to PvE until it is no longer profitable to solo farm due to difficulty.

Skill nerfs should be saved for overused gimmick builds in PvP. Cookie cutter PvE builds should be "balanced" through the use of counters by the mobs themselves.

There are many options ANet could take to kill 55ing while preserving prot spirit in normal play... they managed to adjust spirit bond fairly well in that regard. So I think they would've done it by now if they wanted to.

Then while we are at it nerf the solo necros, elementals and dervishes, mesmers, ritualists etc... when will this nonsence end people? Every time someone crys nerf it slowly ruins the game for the rest of us. I think anet can handle the bots using other methods, loot scaleing has already hurt them. Personally I get tired of seeing all this crying about bots, nerfs etc....just leave our damn game alone! Please!

So A-Net is against farming?

The biggest problem is that Anet fails at PvE as much as they do PvP. When you solo farm you face a group of enemies in that area that are the same class instead of a mixture. It's not rocket science to put 2 mesmers, 2 necros, 2 monks and 2 warriors etc in an area instead of 20 warriors. Instead of doing this Anet had a GREAT idea and decided to bring in loot scaling... They are so brilliant.

This might sound as flaming and I aplogise for that but get a grip.

Solo farming has bene away for players to gain what they want faster. i mean seriosuly ti shows no in-blance or something. We're just doing our thing while otherws watch and are overcome witht he jealoousy that they dont have the resources to do the same.

We all started out as people with no money. We all adapted to what was given to us. We all found our way of getting by. (I've chose for solo green farming assassin style and running.)

Solo farming is not a big problem. For one I'm sure the number of casual gamers GREATLY outweigh the number of solo farmers. It's not like theres a dramitc increase in solo farmers everyday. It doesn't need to be nerfed...it needs to be recongnized as a tactic in our worlds battlefield.

Peace out.

What inflation are bots causing? Weapons, materials, and mods are cheaper then ever. The only thing bots are doing is gathering gold to sell irl to players, which players should not be buying to begin with. That is a different problem anyhow.

Solo play/farming is something to keep players occupied, taking that out would likely drive away a lot of people. It is a poor idea to say "You can only play this way."

Nerf 'em all. Let Gaile sort 'em out.

my opinions:

What we have now are very few spots that are worth farming. There are only a handful of items that are rare enough to be way out of reach for the "casual player," and most of the hardcore players as well. So why are most people trying to solo farm for now? Reasons would be for the enjoyment of it, to build up their bankroll anticipating new armor purchases, to get that certain weapon skin they want and for something to do.

The use of 55's is only harmful because of bots. The way bots are harmful to the game...? They are harmful to the enjoyment of it for the rest of us (period). It has little to do with gold they've farmed. What I mean is that they have influenced ANet's design and mechanics for certain areas of the game that were once fun or could have been fun. They've taken steps in attempts to curb bots and stop gold selling which supposedly slowly increases the prices of ingame items. Typically teamed with reasons for change we now have comments about making things accessible and affordable for the "casual player." (I'm not sure when it was decided that a person that plays two hours a week should be able to pop on and buy the most rare items in the game. Even so, the most casual players I've had in my guild have either finished or gotten far enough in each campaign to make some good amounts of gold, or in a position to do so.) So what has happened is that we no longer have places that are fun and profitable to farm, such as griffons outside Augury. The bots are still around but what we get out of the game has been altered. Personally, there could be 5 bots or 5,000 bots and I wouldn't notice if it does in fact escalate item prices because I don't buy or sell items to other players. So all I notice are the negative alterations to the game as it effects solo play.

My play style is probably similar to a good majority of the PvE community. I play with guildees when we do missions, during weekend events like triple green drops and for areas like FoW, SF and Tombs. Other than that I am almost entirely a solo player w/ cheerios (hero-hench). We are now looking at almost seven months since NF came out. Almost everyone in my guild has finished taking all of their characters through. Not very many are hitting HM missions very hard, so outside of doing random missions every so often most people are doing their own thing. For almost everyone that includes some sort of farming. Unfortunately, the chance of getting something worth much are slim because so little is rare anymore and with loot scaling one comes back with very little (like 438g and a handful of whites from UW).

Solo play is integral to the health of GW. We already know that most people detest pugs. If a person's guild is inactive or everyone is busy and there aren't funs things that can be done on your own... *log off* If this continues too much the person will eventually quit *logging on* at all.

I think that this is EXACTLY what Anet should do to nerf botters. This wouldn't make the botter prone areas any harder for normal players.

As much as I want the 55s to DIE because they run around flaunting their awesome drops and ability to farm HM, and I mutter to myself at night, "Don't worry. They'll be nerfed soon" as I try to resist the temptation of making a monk JUST because they can farm so many things, for the whole of the population they should not be nerfed.

As glountz says, soon those now-obsolete 55ers will want the trappers to die, then the obsolete trappers (like me!) will want the earth tanks to die, etcetera, etcetera.

After looking over many of the replies here, nerfing the build(s) does not sit well, however there are many great suggestions of alternatives. I have many solo builds myself and would hate to see them go. I took a risk starting this thread because I knew I would take some heat from some of you, it is all good no hard feelings. I strictly play PVE and do not have the viewpoint needed to see how changes like this could affect PVP.

Perhaps a more vigorous reporting of violators on the part of the community would be a better option? I know I have reported around a hundred bots, since they are pretty easy to spot. Would it be better to have a some kind of thread here in GURU of bot sightings and those of us whom have a some extra time can observe and report them on a regular basis. Something along the lines of a neighborhood watch. I noticed many in Augury rock that would run to the skyward reach sign then to the ghost then out to skyward reach. There is absolutely no reason for a human to repeat this action over and over as they do.

If ANET is confident in their ability to positively identify a bot from a human farmer then we should support the effort in a positive manner. We could do this by listing areas with large concentrations of bots and spend 10-20 minutes of your in between time a week reporting them. Maybe even do some trading while you identify them.

Again I will say I have seen what happens to games where bots take over, I really loved Diablo and Diablo II and played it for years and it became a nightmare with all the bots/maphacks/dupes/advertisements for porn sites and so on I could go on but you get the idea. If there are bots that are spamming for trades they will start spamming for other things. I do not want to see Guild Wars end up like that.

simple thing is to change runes especially for monks
either add an weird number or subtract some

make it like 57 or 53. The 55 build wouldn't work as well, and perhaps we should just have only 1 sup rune per character using ther armor with it on, if add another sup rune, the first sup runed armor would unequip. We could still use unlimited majors . that'd work for a while, and it won't affect the skills at all

No it was the abuse in PvP's GvG that prot bond was nerfed. Sorry to break that little bit of news to you.

now back on topic. WTF is wrong with some of you, man the botpobhia is spreading maybe we need to send in the doctors to clear this up. i hear its only a few hundred shots to the rear posteria area. get over it will some of you.

Oh and Lyra sorry but distortion is only a minor neusiance to those of us that actually know how to use our 55's.

Whoa Tullzinski, your full of 'it' and yourself. Just because you see a monk with tatts zoning doesn't make it a bot. And your system is easy to abuse; I may just report you as a bot

I have a monk
I wear tatts
I zone regularly on farming runs
I even sometimes use the hotkey actions (Auto run r, and sign post clicking.)
I almost always have local chat off.
If I get a random trade, I decline and ignore it.
If I get a Whisper about botting, Your likely to get a STFU noob! response.

And one final thing.

So to prevent 'this' you want a 55 nerf...Your confused. You want a way to prevent bots from accessing GW. And yet you claim banning/ Nerfing 55's will do this?
Spam bots can be any class, don't require armour or skills. Infact they require coding at alevel of a 9 yr old. (Enter, message, enter, enter, up arrow, enter, repeat enter, up arrow, enter)

Sorry, but your debate has become a flop. It's what happens when you present no logical argument, or evidence to back up your basis!. Nerfing a single build or skill will not prevent bots.

And while we are nerfing solo-farming:

remove spirits from the game since there's lots of solo-farming with spirits in Urgoz going on at the moment. I think I got over 200 golden items last 2 days.

Here's what I got dropped with my ranger and necromancer

It's been demonstrated that there are numerous non-55 solo farming builds that can even work better.

It's much better to nerf the solo off hand item vs rune stacking or the skills themselves (and I'm against changing this).

All MMO games with a virtual economy have bot problems and I prefer Anet's method vs heavy handed mass bands (they still make mistakes) that other games use.

Anet has stated they have NO problem with personal farming and feel if something is out of wack, THEY will change what ever needs to be done.

And I'm a simple PvE player that makes do never seeing more then 1-3p at any given time / non-farmer.

Who said anything about [wiki]distortion[/wiki]?

Core skills: [wiki]Diversion[/wiki] , [wiki]Shatter Enchantment[/wiki]. Go 55 with that in the mob.

[wiki]Spell Breaker[/wiki] you say?

Try: two bad guys in a mob with [wiki]Lightning Touch[/wiki] and [wiki]Aftershock[/wiki] or [wiki]Signet of Agony[/wiki] and [wiki]Barbed Signet[/wiki]

The point is not to make farming impossible, just difficult, so it requires some talent. Anet could easily render the 55 near useless just by making mobs more diverse with proper shutdown and enchantment hate.

OK Roshi, what would you suggest?

I think it's safe to say that the vast majority DO NOT AGREE with the OP.

55ing amounts to an exploit that would enrage a small, vocal sect of the community if it were fixed. Almost all classes can 55, and it dosent take that much intelligence or creativity to do it.

Just fix it. The complainers will complain, but it will subside. People who only play GW to 55 should probably leave the game anyway.

It's bad enough that PvP is constantly dragging PvE down. If we start implementing stupid ideas like this, the opposite will also be true.

Also, don't make threads like this. Anet has been on a cocaine/acid-trip lately and I wouldn't be surprised if they started actually considering every forum post that suggests detrimental and obscene changes to the game, just for shits and giggles, you know?

EDIT: I just read all the other dim-witted comments (i.e. 'Farmers should just leave the game' e.t.c.) and I just thought I'd remind you 'visionaries' that every time a nerf has been set on a farming build, a new one emerges within time. There are still plenty of Warrior, Ele, Ranger, Necro, Assassin, Ritualist hell, even Mesmer farming builds that DON'T rely on the 55/105 setup, so why does it seem right to destroy the Monk's (almost) one and only standard farming build? Besides, you'll screw pvp to hell if you mess with Protective Spirit, and plenty parts of Pve too.

To translate what the OP is actually saying: YEAH LETS DESTROY 55 MONKS BECAUSE THERE ARE TOO MANY BOTS LOL.

All that means is you'll see warrior bots not to long after they're destroyed. And if you keep destroying things, the game will be gone.

there will always be bots in a game when people buy gold.

IF no one buys any gw gold there will be no bots.

problem solved.

oh wait... first you guys have to stop buying the gold!

lol sorry i meant diversion as was how you said on its own is not 55 killer.

oh and btw why isnt this thread closed yet since its nothing more than a 55 hate thread.

The thing that makes GW fun is the thing that botters are so easily able to exploit. It is INSANELY easy to max out your character, and there are plenty of mobs in the wold.

Think about it, in Prophecies you can get through the pre-searing in tops 30 minutes, get run by a buddy through Ascalon to Yaks, from Yaks to Beacons, and from Beacons to Droks in less than 2 hours. If your buddy is a gold farmer you can get the gold to get the runs, get gold to get max armor and get run to wherever to leach off your gold farmer buddy to get to lvl 20 and be farming yourself before lunchtime. It wouldn't be efficient because you are 30 attribute points short, but you would have max armor and be level 20 in a couple hours.

Get some more money from your buddy and get run to Sanctum Cay, do that mission, get run through the desert, get run through desert missions, and the doppleganger is easy and you are able to get the extra 30 attribute points. 15 of which you just have to zone to some towns, the other get the southern shiverpeaks run, and you have the last 15 atrribute points after simple quest.

Your character is now level 20, has all 200 attribute points and with the elite tomes you dont even have to hunt through the wilderness to capture SoJ or SS. Just get the PVP unlocks and 2 elite tomes. All of which is paid for by the first gold farmer because it is a good investment to get the second one up and running to be able to keep selling gold to lazy ass noobs.

The only way to fix this is to decrease the number of mobs in an area and make it take longer to max out your character. If you wander into a zone and there is rarely a group of enemies like in a traditional MMO then it takes longer to farm all that gold. If it takes longer to level up and get to places to farm stronger enemies that drop better loot, it wont be worth it to all the gold farmers because the initial time investment is so high, unlike Guild Wars where you can have a maxed out characters in one work day.

Well for starters I know almost nothing about game design or the billions of functions involved.

I do know that nerfing a skill or a class isn't going to stop the problem.

Monks were one of the first classes to be hit with the nerf bat, and they have been regularly hit every skill update. They nerfed there smite prayers, Then they nerfed AOE. Not to mention the other various skill nerfs for the other classes.

Still the bots are there, how about coming up with a way of nerfing/banning the bots! I don't know the technical aspects but surely they would have to know IPs and who is connecting from where. The troublesome bots are never individuals with a 3rd party program, there organised companies out to make money.[b] Work on banning the Bots from accessing the game, not nerfing the game to prevent it being desirable for bots and gold farmers[/]b.

Changing the game to nerf a skill or a class will just force the bots to change their class, alter their skills or even adopt new farming method.

My answer find a way of blocking/banning the bots; Before you look at ways of nerfing/banning skill setups and classes.

So, what you are saying is to stop bots, an entire class should be nerfed and an entire style of play needs to be cast aside? If prot spells don't work on the caster, then to prot the prot monk in groups both PVE and PVP, groups are either going to have to bring tandem prot monks or do without. Do you even play the game? In PVE enemies run directly for the character with the lowest AL and lowest HP(hint, usually monks and ele folks), and killing monks is always a good thing in PVP. Holy law of Unintended Consequences Batman, and all because some people don't play the game the way that you like.

Personally, I think ANet has found a great balance in targeting bots. They have to go slow, or else a bunch of people get banned by mistake and then come here to complain. Remember that saying, "Better to let a thousand guilty men go free than to punish one innocent man"? ANet is following that principle and I couldn't be happier. They should have a couple people pop from town to town and pursue the people that are clearly farming with bots, and leave the rest of us alone. This is exactly what they are doing.

I think since ecto prices dropped in the past couple weeks some folks that were sitting on stacks of them saw their net worth drop by half or more and are really mad about it. When ectos were at 12-14k, we saw far less of these "ZOMG for the good of the game, nerf solo farming!!1!111" proposals.

edit: typos

In my opinion, you can't nerf any single solo farming build without nerfing about 1,000 other builds that aren't meant for solo farming. And the 55 has only been singled out because its the most common and most legendary, i'm sure if an ele build was even more legendary that'd be singled out instead.

And the farmers that do want to make the money, if prices for items goes down it only means a little more hard work to get the wanted amount of cash.

/signed.
We have had these discussions for 2 years. We get a completely new game in another 2 years. Let it be. Give more room to more original topics like how to build a bridge from GW1 to GW2, and stop posting about more nerfs, economy and titles.

I hate to tell you this mani. but Mister B is right protective bond was nerfed because of solo farming.It was hardly ever used in pvp play as maintained enchantments were.This was all discussed in a thread here on the Guru by one of the founders of the 55.They nerfed PB because of the 55 as the switch to protective spirit.

The whole issue of gold farmers and sellers so what if you can afford than buy it.You might want to tell all those who shop at The Gap the same thing after all it is the American Way of freedom to do what we want although me being Canadian we are so much like in a way.If you can afford to buy gold then buy it it is not against any Laws that I know of and not punishable by a criminal offense.There are lots of ppl who have bought gold and used it to buy more than one set of 15K armour that being FoW.I see lots of this in game all the time and they are quite new to the game or char as well their Guild Leader bought with his bought gold.

It is so easy to day to start a guild and buy a guild hall and guild services why because of online gold purchases.I see new guilds poping up all the time and saying new guild with guild hall with all services.

The only reason Anet may not want you to buy it is because of 14 year olds who might get ripped off when no services are delivered so who would they complain to Anet.Anet would prefer not to be held responsible or liable for your purchase that is why there is that clause in the Eula it is no different than someone giving you 100k of gold who knows where that came from.

There is a way to stop the botting, just as there is a way to stop shoplifting.

Close the doors and shut down the shop. Barring that you will not ever completely stop either activity.

You can make things more difficult for botters, but it's a bit like chemotherapy. Sure you might kill the "really bad" stuff faster, but you are killing the whole thing at the same time - and too high of a dose at one time means rapid death.

Seriously, it's just a freaking game. I think the loot scaling was stupid as were some of the other changes like Soul Reaping, and I'm a little bummed because I loved the way it used to be. It's different now - and not in a good way imho, so I find myself spending less and less time on the game. Others may like the changes and spend more and more time on the game. But at the end of it all it's still just a game. It's not likely that your life will be greatly enhanced or diminished if you play more or not at all.

I never have understood and still don't understand why some people get so worried about how someone else decides to play the game. No one has EVER shown clearly a truly negative effect that solo farming has on the game. Even botting probably doesn't have nearly the negative impact as many assume it does. And, as many on here have pointed out, botters only make RL money if players buy the GW gold from them.

How about we all just play the game the way we like to do it and not worry about what everyone else is doing? *sigh* I know it's a lot to ask..........


P.S To the OP - 55's are not permanently nerfed anyway, so the whole premise of your argument is invalid. The drops have been nerfed, but the 55 builds still work flawlessly.